Adoption processes and implications

Ethics - Abortion vs. Adoption

ABORTION vs. ADOPTION

Unwanted pregnancy presents an ethical dilemma, one that raises issues about the morality of abortion, the logical criteria for defining the source and nature of obligations and the respective rights of the woman and the fetus. It also raises issues of religion and fundamental beliefs about when life begins. More specifically, it requires us to consider when mere cellular "life" becomes a human being entitled to human rights and full protections of law. One alternative to terminating a pregnancy through medically- induced abortion is to carry the fetus to full term and place the newborn baby for adoption immediately after birth. In an objective sense, the most crucial factor that would make adoption a morally preferable choice to abortion is the age of the fetus at the time of consideration. In that regard, terminating a pregnancy at one week may present no moral dilemma, whereas terminating a pregnancy in the ninth month is tantamount to the murder of a human being.

Those who subscribe to religious beliefs that equate the life of a fertilized zygote a few hours after conception with the life of a fully developed person consider abortion just as morally impermissible as any other type of murder. But because those beliefs derive from religious doctrine rather than any objective criteria, they are irrelevant to a discussion about morality unless all participants share the same religious view (Dershowitz 2002). As many philosophers and ethicists point out (Abrams & Buckner 1990), the objective moral criteria that determine whether adoption is preferable to abortion do not relate to when "life" begins, but when characteristics of humanness begin. Without a preconceived religious decree that life one day after conception is equally valuable to life one day before natural birth, the questions should be: (1) what anatomical characteristics or attributes make a fetus a person? And even more importantly, (2) at what stage of fetal development can a fetus experience pain and discomfort? (Abrams & Buckner 1990).

Most philosophers and bio-ethicists do not recognize any moral problem with abortion before the stage of fetal development where a brain and nervous system form because they are necessary for sensory perception and the fetus is incapable of feeling pain at that stage. Still, philosophers are concerned with when a clump of cells becomes a person, irrespective of sensation, or else aborting fetuses at eight months would be permissible as long as it was anesthetized first. Clearly, apart from religious beliefs and sensory perception, a nearly fully developed fetus may no longer be aborted morally; but just as clearly, a very recently fertilized zygote does not create a moral obligation to carry it to full term to be adopted instead of being aborted shortly after conception. There is no precise instant where a fetus makes an instantaneous transition to sentience; nor does it suddenly acquire all the attributes that makes it a person either.